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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164974">Bad Things for the Sake of Good Times</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm'>paperstorm</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, For which I am only somewhat apologetic, Gratuitous abuse of Catholicism, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Masturbation, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Smut, Switching</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:40:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,577</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164974</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”</i><br/><br/><i>He turns. Joe is across the deserted room, leaning casually with his arms crossed against a dark wooden confessional. His head is tilted impishly to one side. Nicky stares at him and laughs nervously. “Have you?”</i><br/><br/><i>Joe just raises an eyebrow at him and gets into the booth, shutting the small door behind him.</i><br/>//<br/>This is entirely plotless and is mostly just dirty talk and blasphemy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>340</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Bad Things for the Sake of Good Times</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/RighteousRiot/gifts">RighteousRiot</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written very quickly for my very dear friend who has had a truly horrible week. I hope this makes you smile.</p><p>Because I didn’t want to be entirely cliched and name a church-centered fic after Take Me To Church, I named it for a lyric from the song Church by Aly &amp; AJ. Is that really less cliched? Who knows not me.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cathedral is towering. Constructed of pale stone, lavish, baroque in its architecture. Its copper rooftop has turned green after centuries of exposure. Lifeless eyes stare down at them, immobile figures that seem to see them regardless. Nicky blinks snowflakes out of his eyes as he looks up at them. Next to him, Joe leans in and bumps his shoulder into Nicky’s.<br/>
 <br/>
“St. Nicholas’,” he says, nodding to a sign near the edge of the sidewalk.<br/>
 <br/>
“Santa Claus,” Nicky replies, and Joe laughs quietly.<br/>
 <br/>
“Among other things. Were you named for him?”<br/>
 <br/>
“I don’t know,” Nicky answers. “I doubt it, he was Turkish.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Should we go in? Revisit your Catholic roots?”<br/>
 <br/>
Joe is teasing, and Nicky grins at him. He steps in close, wrapping his arms around his husband’s waist and pressing a quick kiss to his lips. “My Catholic roots would frown upon me kissing you. For more than one reason.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Among other things,” Joe repeats, smirking.<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky hums in agreement. “Ah, yes. All sorts of sinful things that we do.”<br/>
 <br/>
“C’mon.” Joe takes Nicky’s hand and pulls him toward the door.<br/>
 <br/>
The inside of the building is even more ornate. Gold glitters from every surface, so much decadence that Nicky is almost ashamed of it, even though it’s been hundreds and hundreds of years since he’s considered himself a part of it. Everywhere in the world people suffer, and need, and struggle to survive on what little they have, and men in places like this flaunt their wealth and their abundance and tell everyone else to pray for table scraps. Nicky finds himself scowling as he looks around, wanting suddenly to take a match to it all.<br/>
 <br/>
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”<br/>
 <br/>
He turns. Joe is across the deserted room, leaning casually with his arms crossed against a dark wooden confessional. His head is tilted impishly to one side.<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky stares at him and laughs nervously. The place is deserted, open to the public but unpopulated like most of the cathedrals in Prague. Nicky remembers reading once that it’s one of the least religious countries in the modern world. That the Soviet Union imposed atheism, and the people became used to that and never really went back. There is a massive cathedral on every corner in the city, and most of them are just lifeless monuments to what they once were. In the summer, they would be filled with tourists snapping photos and marveling at the splendor. Today, in dreary February, this one, at least, Nicky and Joe have all to themselves.<br/>
 <br/>
“Have you?” Nicky asks, responding far too late to the words Joe had spoken.<br/>
 <br/>
Joe just raises an eyebrow at him and gets into the booth, shutting the small door behind him. Nicky frowns, but follows, because he follows Joe everywhere. These confessionals hadn’t been invented yet when Nicky was a priest, wouldn’t be for several centuries after he’d left the Church. He knows from popular media how they function, though. He climbs into the side meant for the priest and sits on the wooden bench. There is a sliding block that covers an open grate, and he moves it so he can see Joe’s shape through it.<br/>
 <br/>
“You know I don’t really know how to do this,” he says.<br/>
 <br/>
Joe smiles at him through the metal and shrugs. “I bet you can improvise your way through it.”<br/>
 <br/>
“And you? There isn’t something comparable in Islam.”<br/>
 <br/>
“No. But I’ve seen movies.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Alright.” Nicky laughs again, and deeply intones, “tell me your sins, my child.”<br/>
 <br/>
“It has been centuries since I’ve prayed.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Me too,” Nicky says.<br/>
 <br/>
“You aren’t supposed to be confessing <em>your</em> sins.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Right. Sorry. Continue.”<br/>
 <br/>
“I take the Lord’s name in vain sometimes.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky snickers. “Bad boy.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Truly.”<br/>
 <br/>
“What else?”<br/>
 <br/>
“I’ve taken lives. That goes against the teachings of most religions, and I’ve taken so many.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Only when you’ve had to,” Nicky amends. They’re playing, but it’s important Joe is reminded of it. That he’s good and gentle-hearted. “Never maliciously. Never happily. Never if there was another option.”<br/>
 <br/>
“I guess so.”<br/>
 <br/>
“I know so,” Nicky insists.<br/>
 <br/>
“If I confess something really sinful, will you absolve me?”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky hums and pretends to think about it. “Depends how bad it is, I suppose.”<br/>
 <br/>
“I’m very much in love.”<br/>
 <br/>
“That doesn’t sound so terrible.”<br/>
 <br/>
“It isn’t. It’s wonderful. But the things that I want to do to him …”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky swallows reflexively. “Oh?”<br/>
 <br/>
“Mhm.” The wood creaks as Joe shifts on the bench. His voice, lower than usual and gravel-rough, continues, “he’s gorgeous, you see. His eyes sparkle like starlight. His profile is that of a powerful Roman Emperor. His skin glows, soft to the touch, warm under my fingers.”<br/>
 <br/>
“He sounds very handsome,” Nicky jokes, and Joe hums again and answers in a serious tone.<br/>
 <br/>
“Oh, he is. You would not believe how handsome. I see people lusting after him, sometimes. Complete strangers, thinking maybe they can have him in the ways that I do. If only they knew.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Is his appearance all you care about?”<br/>
 <br/>
“No. He has a beautiful heart. He’s kind. Generous. Fiercely protects his family, but cares for us, too. Makes sure we’ve had enough to eat. Reminds us to sleep. Gives us an ear to listen, a place to unburden our hearts, when they get too heavy.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky swallows again, this time around unexpected emotion that rises in his throat. Joe can always do that. He can always produce some poetry out of thin air, spin it like gold thread and wrap it around Nicky’s heart when he isn’t expecting it. “Joe.”<br/>
 <br/>
“He takes care of everyone. Sometimes I worry no one is taking care of him.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky frowns. “You are.” When he gets no response, he leans forward, squinting to make Joe’s shape out through the metal grate. “Joe. You are.”<br/>
 <br/>
Joe’s dark eyes turn to him. His lips curve into a small smile, and his head nods, almost imperceptibly, especially in the shadows of the booth. “I hope so.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Still, none of this sounds particularly sinful,” Nicky says, reminding him of their game. He smiles in his own shadowy compartment at the warm, melodic sound of Joe chuckling lowly.<br/>
 <br/>
“I could tell you about his ass.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky presses his lips together and stifles a laugh. “What about it?”<br/>
 <br/>
“Oh, it’s … delicious,” Joe says, savoring the words like a decadent dessert. “Round and plump, soft when I squeeze into it with my fingers or skate over it with my teeth.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Sounds like you’re describing a Thanksgiving turkey.”<br/>
 <br/>
“It would be a real slight against God if I were to think about an animal the way I think about his ass. I do want to eat it, though. In a way. I want to all the damn time, sometimes I can barely think straight if it’s been too long since I’ve had my mouth on it.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky wasn’t expecting that, and he coughs to cover the hitch in his throat when he sharply inhales. Something stirs in his loins.<br/>
 <br/>
“It calls to me, every time I see him undress. I want to pin him to the mattress and spread those fleshy cheeks apart so I can see where he lets me inside him. It’s so small and pink, so tightly furled but it relaxes so beautifully for me. Twitches when I press my tongue against it. Draws my fingers in, clenches around them, yields easily to take more.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky’s heart races. He isn’t sure, anymore, what they’re doing. If it’s still a game, if Joe has lost his mind and forgotten where they are. Nicky doesn’t believe in God the way he once did, but they’re still in a place of divinity and worship and Joe shouldn’t be saying these things. Not here. And the fact that he shouldn’t be, makes it all the more enticing that he is. Blood moves in Nicky’s veins.<br/>
 <br/>
“The sounds he makes, when I lick him there,” Joe continues. His voice has gone rough again, rumbly, as if he’s recovering from a bout of flu.<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky realizes, as an entirely inconsequential side-thought, that he doesn’t actually know what that would sound like. They heal too quickly, he’s never seen Joe ill.<br/>
 <br/>
“Beautiful little whimpers spill from his lips, high-pitched and needy, so needy for me. How much I love when he’s needy for me. To keep going, make it wetter, curl my fingers and stroke along the spot deep inside him. The way he jerks when I find it, babbles incoherently in six different languages as I massage it.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Feels like fireworks,” Nicky says, the words tumbling from his mouth before his foggy brain can catch up to realize he’s even responded.<br/>
 <br/>
“I know,” Joe says. “Should I tell you about his cock? About how gorgeous it is, thick and flushed dark with blood when he desires me?”<br/>
 <br/>
“Alright,” Nicky squeaks. He curls his hands into fists against his jeans, shivering as Joe chuckles again. He’s hard inside his underwear, suddenly, and he doesn’t remember noticing that happening. Arousal swirls in his gut, making him warm under his clothes.<br/>
 <br/>
“I bet it’s like that right now,” Joe says, the smirk apparent on his face even though Nicky can’t see him. “I bet its filling against his leg, straining against his pants, aching to be freed so it can stand upright.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky doesn’t answer. Won’t give Joe the satisfaction of knowing he’s right, but his own quickened breathing is loud in his ears and he knows Joe will be able to hear it.<br/>
 <br/>
“It’s heavenly against my tongue. The way he tastes, how warm it is, the way it stretches my lips around it. I have to convince him, sometimes, to fuck my mouth. He never wants to make me uncomfortable. I wish he knew it was just the opposite. I wish he knew how much I love it, when he loses control and turns wild, pulls at my hair and thrusts his hips and <em>uses </em>me to chase after his own mindless pleasure. How much it makes my head spin, how hard it is to keep from fisting my own cock as he does because I’m so aroused I can’t think.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky’s head tips back, thunking hard into the wall behind him. The burst of pain vibrates along his skull and ricochets through the rest of him. He bites back a moan, chewing at the inside of his cheek to keep it inside, and his fingernails dig into his palms. He wants so badly to touch himself, erection begging for some relief where it’s trapped in his pants, but he doesn’t. It feels like he shouldn’t, even though he hasn’t believed in Hell in centuries and if the place were real, he would already be going there, so behaving at this late date would be irrelevant.<br/>
 <br/>
“And his mouth,” Joe continues, a little more breathless, now, but still in control of himself, unlike Nicky, whose head is spinning. “I could speak every language that’s ever existed and I still wouldn’t have the words to tell you how much I adore his mouth. His lips look so nice wrapped around my cock, shiny and swollen. The way he moans around me when I slide over his tongue, like I’m the most wonderful thing he’s ever tasted, like he would happily spend the rest of his life like that, on his knees, stuffed so full of me that he can barely breathe.”<br/>
 <br/>
“<em>Fuck</em>,” Nicky rasps, heat rising quickly in his cheeks when Joe laughs again. He knows exactly what he’s doing, the bastard. It was his plan all along, Nicky understands, and isn’t sure whether he wants to scold Joe for it or burst into his side of the booth and drop to his knees and recreate the exact image Joe is painting. In 900 years they have loved and pleasured each other in every way they could possibly think of, but that is one of Nicky’s favorites. He loves having Joe in his mouth.<br/>
 <br/>
“I should tell you about that, as well,” Joe says. “The fucking, I mean. People might be surprised. To most, he is nothing but kind and gentle and caring. There is fire and ice underneath, mountains of it, but most people who see that side of him end up too dead to tell about it. People might not expect him to fuck the way he does everything else, with kindness but with such ferocity that it thoroughly ruins me. He holds my gaze as he moves inside me, beautiful eyes wild and intense. At first he rolls his hips just so, enough to tease, enough for me to feel him filling me, but not enough for more than that. He waits until I’m begging, until I don’t know my name anymore, before he shows me what I can really take.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky can’t help it anymore, his right hand flies to his crotch and he squeezes, and even that miniscule amount of pressure has him shaking. He can see everything Joe describes so vividly in his mind.<br/>
 <br/>
“He bends me in half and he fucks me until I don’t know anything at all expect for his body and mine, he refuses to put a hand on me, he makes he drown in just the feeling of him plundering me with his cock, makes me come on just that alone. And I do, and it shakes the foundations of everything I have ever known, every damn time, even though we’ve been at it since the 11<sup>th</sup> century.”<br/>
 <br/>
His cock jumps underneath his hand, oozing slick into his underwear, and Nicky swears again. It is a game, he knows that, and he lets Joe win. He doesn’t care that Joe will tease him later, he doesn’t care that Joe will have a big head for days over getting Nicky to crack first and so embarrassingly quickly. None of it means anything, he just wants Joe’s hands on him right this second and might not survive if he doesn’t get it. Hysterically, Nicky stands and shoves open the door. The second, the one between him and Joe, creaks pathetically as he pulls at it, voicing its displeasure at being handled so roughly. Nicky doesn’t care about that either.<br/>
 <br/>
Joe’s legs are spread wide and his own hand is shoved into his pants, but he’s still smirking as Nicky comes into view. He’s stroking himself leisurely, careful and controlled.<br/>
 <br/>
“You are going to pay for this,” Nicky tells him, collapsing into him and catching Joe’s mouth in a nearly violent kiss.<br/>
 <br/>
“God, I hope so,” Joe breathes, wrapping his hand around the back of Nicky’s neck and kissing him back just as ferociously.<br/>
 <br/>
“Don’t say ‘God’. We are not doing this here, do you hear me? Get up.”<br/>
 <br/>
Joe hums delightedly. “Yes, Father.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Fuck you,” Nicky says, but then he laughs wildly as he pulls a stumbling Joe up to his feet.<br/>
 <br/>
Joe grins even wider. “Yes, please. I bet there’s an alley out back with our names on it.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Oh, very romantic.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Don’t want romantic.” Joe drops one hand to Nicky’s ass, squeezing and pushing his hips forward, grinding gratuitously into him. Nicky’s neglected cock leaks even further into his already-messy boxers, responding as he always does to Joe moving against him. “Want you to fuck me.”<br/>
 <br/>
“Do I still have to absolve you of all this sin, after?”<br/>
 <br/>
“Nope. Turns out I don’t care about that.”<br/>
 <br/>
Nicky smiles. “Good. Me neither.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!!</p><p>Come talk to me <a href="http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/">on tumblr</a> if you want!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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